The Design of Media and Entertainment in the Year 2039

“Sometimes when you’re thinking about the future, you have to look into the past,” says Isabelle Olsson, director of design for Google Home products. “When I first thought about the year 2039, I thought, ‘That’s far!’ But then, that’s actually only 20 years. Twenty years ago, we lived fairly similarly.” For Olsson, and for other experts interviewed for this story, no one is predicting that we’ll be orbiting, Jetsons-style, with our robot maid by 2039. Rather, the changes to the worlds of media and entertainment will be incremental, not monumental.

Traditional magazines, for example, have been accused of death rattles for decades now. If the past 20 years are an indication, they’ll still be extant in 2039, albeit many with digital-only editions and living on platforms like Texture, which provide unlimited digital copies of many popular titles. Regardless of their form, the curated point-of-view from a magazine will always be desirable to readers: “The more noise there is on social media, all those TV channels, and so on, the more demand there is for a finite, finishable package that helps you understand what’s going on,” said The Economist’s deputy editor, Tom Standage in a recent interview.

More broadly speaking, some of the most useful advances in 20 years might be somewhat invisible, in the form of greater seamless integration of everything from communication platforms to smart-home features. And with the plummeting cost of many technologies, from intuitive home speakers to virtual reality headsets, Olsson is hopeful that many forms of entertainment will be accessible not just to the elite. “That trend is just going to continue,” she says, “All of this great help that technology can bring will be available to everyone.” How will we watch movies, experience theater, and visit museums in 2039? We spoke to experts from Twitter to the Whitney Museum of American Art to paint a clearer picture of what the future holds.

TELEVISION AND FILM VIEWING

While virtual reality headsets have been floating around for decades, the recent rise of—and clamor for—companies like Oculus is the clearest proof yet that VR is a technology with staying power. Amy Webb, the noted American futurist and founder of the Future Today Institute, predicts that by 2039, our entertainment watching will be even that much more all-encompassing. “Feature-length stories will be told in an immersive environment, which can be enjoyed either in our homes using a head-mounted display and earbuds, or in cinema pods—think small rooms—where a group of friends can wire in together to share in the same storytelling experience,” says Webb, who is also a consultant on Hulu’s The First, an upcoming show that takes place in the near future. “The living room of 2039 will still have couches, comfy chairs, and coffee-table books—just not fixed screens taking up space on our walls,” she adds.

Jim Lanzone, CEO of CBS Interactive and Chief Digital Officer of CBS Corporation, is also planning for a future where every aspect will have a technological component. “We know every piece of the real world will be augmented digitally,” he says. “We'll attend a sporting event without actually being physically present. We won’t just challenge others to a video game—we’ll find ourselves actually in the game. We won't just watch a movie about dinosaurs—we'll be living among them. We may not be able to envision the exact form factors just yet, but we know they’re coming.” Media itself will also be more accessible, due to better integration: “Today the average person already spends 11 hours per day interacting with media, [but] by 2039 that number will rise to encompass literally every waking hour, simply because media will be ever-present,” Lanzone says.

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SOCIAL MEDIA

Twenty years ago, we lived in a world without Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. Now, as everyone from Baby Boomers to Gen Z tweens can attest, it’s virtually impossible to imagine a day without them. But just as chat rooms and MySpace have faded into obsolescence, will these media titans still be reigning two decades from now? If you ask Grace Kim, Twitter’s design and research lead, the answer is undoubtedly yes. “In 2039, Twitter will still be the best place to talk about what’s happening in the world,” Kim says. “But Twitter will be even more conversational. It’ll be easier to talk with anyone about anything. You’ll be able to have conversations with more people, from more places, in more languages.” As for how users will actually experience social media, that, too, will be more seamless. “The aesthetic of interfaces should reflect the increasingly connected global population,” she says of future designs. “Designers in emerging markets will have more opportunities to have conversations and work with others around the globe, regardless of physical location.”

Kevin Systrom, Instagram’s founder, echoed this democratizing view in a 2015 interview for Time magazine (Facebook and Instagram did not respond to questions by press time.) “The next decade, at least on Instagram, will be the decade where we realize the power of a collective group of people capturing the world in real time through their phones,” said Systrom. “I don’t think we quite understand how that will disrupt industries, whether that’s news [or] how we consume events happening around the world.”

MUSEUMS

In an increasingly digital world, museums around the globe are realizing that the key to attracting visitors lies in their interactivity. “We used to worry about having apps and interactive guides, and while those advances are great, what young people really want are exhibitions that engage the social and cultural questions of the day,” says Scott Rothkopf, deputy director of programs for the Whitney Museum of American Art. “If the past 20 years are any indicator, museums may not look all that different physically than they do today. What has changed—and will continue to change—the most is how audiences interact with museums, seeing them less as places of quiet contemplation and more as sites of boisterous civic engagement.” Gone will be the days of no cell phones allowed: “I think we’ll see more selfies, more social media, plus more events, performances, and ‘activations,’” says Rothkopf.

PERFORMANCE SPACES

Similarly to museums, performing arts venues are also focused on the future of interactivity of their productions. For the Kennedy Center, this also means democratizing: finding ways for passionate theater lovers to view performances even if they’re not in Washington. “The emergence of 360 video and VR creates an opportunity for artists and audiences well beyond the in-person audiences,” says Kennedy Center president Deborah Rutter. “Soon, directors and artists will be staging performances designed for the equal enjoyment of both the live and the online audience.” Rutter also predicts an even more symbiotic relationship between performer and viewer: “The art forms are much more likely to be immersive experiences and the artists will be even more moved by the relationships they have with audiences, gaining energy, ideas, and feedback from them,” she says. “Artists and audiences are also likely to be much more proximate to one another—think fewer barriers.”

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